Various types of electronic circuits include a series circuit with several electronic switches. An electronic switch is an electronic device that switches on and off dependent on a drive signal received at a control node, wherein the drive signal can be a current into the control node or a voltage between the control node and a load node of the electronic switch. In a MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor), for example, the control node is gate node and the drive signal is a voltage between the gate node and a source node, the latter being one of the load nodes of a MOSFET. In a MOSFET, the drive voltage is usually referred to as gate-source voltage.
An electronic circuit with an electronic switch may receive a drive signal for the switch from a control circuit, such as a microcontroller, or the like. This drive signals may be referenced to a certain electric potential such as ground. If the electronic switch, however, is not directly connected to this common electric potential the drive signal received by electronic circuit cannot directly be used to drive the electronic switch. In this case, a level shifter may be used to generate, from the drive signal received by the electronic circuit, a drive signal suitable to drive the electronic switch.